The two men at the table exchanged glances. Tim’s faintly humorous, rather resigned. Nicholas’s wry, even a touch patronizing. A look that would never have graced his features when their friendship had first begun. They turned their attention back to Avery, whose face was avidity personified. His soft lips, delicately tinted toffee brown from the satay, were pushed forward into a thrilled marshmallow O.
“My dear!” he cried. “But didn’t we always say? Well, I certainly always said … Are you sure? Well, that clinches it then … Of course I will … and you keep me posted.” He hung up, took a deep swallow of his wine, and hurried back to the table. Bursting with information, he looked from Tim to Nicholas and back again. “You’ll never guess.”
“If there are three more interesting words in the English language,” said Tim, “I’ve yet to hear them.”
“Oh, come on,” Nicholas said, rather slurrily, “what she say?”
“The police have arrested David Smy.”
Avery sat back more than satisfied with the effect of his pronouncement. Nicholas gaped foolishly in disbelief. Tim’s face, golden and ivory in the candle’s flame, became bleached; white and gray. “How does she know?”
“Saw him. She was going to the library when a police car drew up outside the station and two cops marched him inside.”
“Did he have a blanket over his head?”
“Don’t be so bloody silly, Nicholas. How on earth could she have known it was David if he’d had a blanket over his head?”
“Only they do,” persisted Nicholas with stolid determination. “If they’re guilty.”
“Well, really. Sometimes I think your thought processes should be in a medical mysteries museum.”
“Leave the boy alone.” Tim’s voice laid a great chill over the lately so festive company. “He’s had too much to drink.”
“Oh … yes … sorry.” Avery picked up his glass, then nervously put it down again. His exhilaration was draining away fast. Almost as he entertained this thought, the last couple of wisps evaporated. He looked across at Tim, who was not looking at him, Avery, but through him, as if he didn’t exist. Avery looked down at the glistening puddle of peanut sauce, picked up his spoon, which clattered against the gilded rim of the bowl, and tasted a little. It was nearly cold. “Shall I warm this up Tim … do you think? Or bring in the pudding?”
Tim did not reply. He had withdrawn into himself as he occasionally did in a way that Avery dreaded. He knew Tim didn’t mean this behavior as any sort of punishment. The action was so undeliberate as to appear almost involuntary, yet Avery inevitably felt responsible. He turned to their guest. “Are you ready for some pudding, Nico?”
Nicholas smiled briefly and shrugged. He looked a little sulky and deeply abashed, as if guilty of some social misdemeanor. Yet, Avery thought, it is I who have committed the solecism. How unpleasant now, how crass, his reception of Rosa’s news appeared. With what salacious relish had he rushed to the table to relay the information, as if it were some edible goody he couldn’t wait to share. If he had stopped to think, even for a moment, he must have behaved differently. After all, this was a friend they were talking about. They all liked David and his kind, unhurried ways. And now he might be going to prison. For years. No wonder Tim, extremely fastidious at the best of times, had removed his attention from such a lubricious, blubbering display.
“Well …” he said, forcing cheeriness into his voice, “it doesn’t do to get depressed. Okay, Rosa saw him going in … what does that mean? He might have just been asked to help clear up one or two points. Help them with their inquiries.” Avery wished he hadn’t said that. He was sure he’d read somewhere that was the official way of announcing that the police had got the guilty party but weren’t legally supposed to say so. “Just because he was the man in the lighting box doesn’t mean … well … what else have they got to go on, after all?” (Only that he had ample opportunity. Only that he was the man who took the razor on. Only that his mistress was now a rich widow.) Tim was getting up.
“What … what’s happening?” said Avery. “We haven’t finished.”
“I’ve finished.”
“Oh, but you must have some cherries, Tim! You know how you love them. I made them especially. In little sugar baskets.”
“Sorry.”
I could kill Rosa, thought Avery. Malicious, scandal-mongering, interfering old bitch! If it weren’t for her, this would never have happened. And we were having such a lovely time. Tears of disappointment and frustration sprang to his eyes. When they cleared, Tim, wearing his overcoat and Borsalino hat, was at the sitting room door. Avery leaped to his feet.
“Where are you going?”
“Just out.”
“But where, Tim?” Avery hurried across and hung on Tim’s arm. His voice trembled as he continued, “You must tell me!”
“I’ve got to go to the station.”
“… the … the police station?” When Tim nodded, Avery cried, “What on earth for?”
But even as he asked, Avery’s heart was squeezed with the terrible cold foreknowledge of what would be Tim’s reply.
“Because,” said Tim, gently removing Avery’s hand from his sleeve, “I was the man in the lighting box.”
Tim was sorry he had come. Barnaby had vouchsafed the information (it seemed to Tim with a certain amount of wry pleasure) that David Smy, far from being arrested, was as free as a bird and likely to remain so. Still, Tim’s confession had been made, and he could hardly take it back. He had assumed once this simple statement had been completed, he would be free to go, but Barnaby seemed keen to question him further. To add to the charm of these unwelcome proceedings, the poisonous youth with the carroty hair was also present at his scrivenings.
“Just background, you understand, Tim,” Barnaby was saying. “Tell me how you got on with Esslyn.”
“As well and as badly as anyone else. There was nothing to get on with, really. He was always posing. You never knew what he truly felt.”
“Even so, it’s unusual for someone to belong to a group for over fourteen years and not have a single relationship of any depth or complexity.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Lots of men don’t have close friendships. As long as Esslyn was much admired and had plenty of sex, he was content.” Tim smiled. “The advertiser’s dream made manifest.”
“No more than human.” Barnaby sounded indulgent. “Which of us can’t say the same?”
Bang on target, thought Troy. Don’t knock it till you’ve had enough. Like when you’re stepping into your coffin. Troy was feeling very put out. He just couldn’t cope with the revelation that the man he thought of (apparently only too appropriately) as the cocky bugger in the executive suit had had it off with Kitty. Paradoxically, his resentment against Tim was now doubled. And the way he sauntered about … Look at him now … completely at home, mildly interested, cool as a cucumber. The dregs of society, thought Troy, should know their place and not come floating to the surface mingling with the good honest brew. Serve Kitty right if she got AIDS.
“He was never short of female company, then?” Barnaby was asking.
“Oh, no. Nothing that lasted long, though. They soon drifted off.”
“You don’t know of anyone in the past that he had rejected? Who might be suffering from unrequited love?”
“Anyone involved with Esslyn, whether rejected or not, suffered from unrequited love. And no, I don’t.”
“You must realize, I’m sure, that Kitty is our number-one suspect. Did you assist her in doing away with her husband?”
“Certainly not. There would have been no reason for me to do so. Our affair was trivial. I was already tired of it.”